Let me introduce you guys. Passow's Monster is ths black box with the mouth and googly eyes for knobs on the left. He's looking at "Fred" but leaning on "Nature Farts" (my newest creation....still needs to be painted). "Passow's Distort-a-board" is clearly marked as is "High on Speed" (in front of that is my EMF Pickup). There's my homemade amp with the speaker and a passive mixer in front of that.

Hey Johnny. Am I seeing that right? You have the keyboard plugged into the little computer type thing?

Yep. Basically I Have the speaker wired to the out jacks so the sound comes from the speaker as well as out of an amp (not in picture). The keyboard has a 1/4" and 1/8" output jack and a 1/8" input for a mic so when I plug the out put of the computer into the output of the keyboard and can use the other output of the keyboard to plug into an amp/speaker/computer etc.

Yea there are. They have so much extra space inside to add all of the little things you want. If you want to see my newer projects I am posting in my own forum now. http://circuitbendingforum.proboards.com

Hmmyeah.. not a lot of activity here, you're right about that. Then again it isn't very helpfull to withdraw and start your own forum. That would be diluting the resources even further. I wish you all the best with it though.

Lot of activity and vast amounts of bending info is on the Yahoo groups "benders" and "benders_anonymous"

Thanks. The qwerty keys were a lucky find, very reliable. I bought some other old keyboards but unfortunately they containded the switchmatixes (matrici?) with two plastic sheets and printed traces you may have encountered (like on the Speak&***es).

Getting them in the box cost me a fair bit of time. It's made of a single block of thick multiplex hollowed out with exacto knife and a small chisel. On and off I spent a major part of 2007 and 2008 summer on it, as I do my woodwork and soldering outside.

How I got the joystick is a fun story. I found a discarded arcade machine by the side of the road, so immediately got the car to schlepp the entire thing home. When I got back there the former owner stepped out of the house and told me it still worked. Well, it didn't when I got home, and I've not been able to restore it. I still have the EPROM board, anyone interested can have it for free.

The joystick was a fourway, with a sturdy pole inside that clicked these microswitches like you can find in old taperecorders and such. I glued on four more microswitches in the corner so now it is an 8-way. It was too deep to fit inside the multiplex block, so I raised it with a 1cm thick piece of perspex. Found in a wastecontainer. You don't want to know the mess of stuff I have in my garage.

Unfortunately the joystick was built for heavy handling, and needs the bulk of the arcademachine to stay stable. It works when firmly holding the breakout box but gets tireing after prolonged use. Ah well, still looks way cool.
Anyway, for those who find more subtle joysticks I'll describe later how it's wired.

First I want to mention the two black pushbuttons on the front. Another nice bit of recycled material: they are 8-pole double throw switches from an old Philips HiFi. The left one has two options of 8 selected points (16 wires going to the DB25 !). The 8 selected bendpoints cross over to the right switch beneath the joystick, where yet 8 other points are connected to the DB25, so here you select either these or the points that were selected with the left switch. The final result is connected to the joystick.

Next (it's a long story) at the joystick the "north south west and east" microswitches are together on one common busswire, the microswitches on the corner switches are on another. A spdt switch connects these busses. The other spdt switch was supposed to take the center connection of a 12-pole rotary switch and connect it to the joystick buss, but in the end it is used to connect the joystick buss to ground.
Despite the vast amount of wiring inside I could still have implemented the 12-way rotary.
The wire I used comes from some telecom data transfer cables a friend gave me. Really thin. Some 48 wires take up about a 7mm circel as I recall. I have two of those cables, more than 10 meters long, I'm never going to use up those.
So if anyone wants some for free they can collect a couple of meters in Breda Netherlands Europe, or I can take it with me to Bloomingdale end of october.
This has been a labor of love. But love gets stale eventually, so I never implemented the 12-way rotary.

Parts bought: DB25 port 1x. spdt switch 2x. Rest: recycled stuff.

To stolenfat: I can so aknowledge you eventually get tired of a large project. Benders often have several objects with RAM/ROM bends. A user interface like yours could be housed in a seperate box and connected with DB25 ports (or even ports with more connections that now I do not know the name of now. I've seen huge ones). Then if you bend another device with loads of bends you can reuse the interface, especially with large double throw switces and rotary selectors to reconfigure.

Also, stolenfat , I noticed you appologising for the first mp3 you posted of your sk1 for it's not doing justice to its possibilities. I relate to that as well. It takes some time to get into the flow of playing/ selecting the optimal bends for your piece. The recording/ filming/editting of your performance is a hassle. While my youtube video is nice as a fast demo, at times this SK1 can be truly awsome. I can just hear the greatness in yours.

Patchbays are nice to interconnect multipel devices and for experimental purpose. For as a standalone device or live use there's nothing like momentary switches all connected on a singel buss. That is: one tag of a swich to a bend point, all other switchtags connected to a single wire. Any point can connect to any other. Connection of multiple points possible. Lightning fast.

its just like bending anything else, you just use the two ends and find a nice point that reacts well.

With this there a slight pitch warble as you run magnets across it. Plus if you put it next to an actual guitar you will here the notes you play affect the noises, which gave me an awesome idea to make a noise guitar but i never went through with it.

I recommend you experiment with them!_________________home made noise and electronic ill-logic

With this [telecaster pickup] there a slight pitch warble as you run magnets across it. Plus if you put it next to an actual guitar you will here the notes you play affect the noises, which gave me an awesome idea to make a noise guitar but i never went through with it.

I recommend you experiment with them!

Cool! I should have an actual tele pickup lying about somewhere (replaced it for a Bill Lawrence) but I haven't seen it for ages.

As the pickup itself has magnets in them and normal guitar stings work you shouldn't have to use magnets. Any ferromagnetic should work. Maybe you could fix metal tines on the Calamaphone over the pickup like a kalimba.
Cut in half sawblades (those with holes at the ends to fix in a span handle)have a nice tone and are practical to fix with bolts.
Or for experimental porposes just a rubberband and a paperclip.
Come to think of it, most benders have lots of little speakers. They have a magnet and a coil as do guitar pickups and could be used as a pickup. Hey, you've inspired me to finish my sawblade kalimba soon. Now I don't have to look for my piezo I lost in the mess of parts.

This little guy is my favorite bend. I call it "Mr. Happynoise. It was one of those cheap inflatable AM/FM radios. It has a plug in power supply. A glove with a photo cell in the palm plugs into it so when you use the glove, it plays like a noisy theremin. You can also make all kinds of wierd glitchy sounds with it by touching the two big brass knob body contacts I put on it. When you switch the glove on, the station knob magically turns into a pitch knob so you can set an octave with it. The volume knob gets cut off when it's generating the theremin sound so I had to add a separate volume knob.

Here is my "Thing" i just finished today.This is my first bent ever, but i must say that electronics are not new for me.
I decided to give it a retro "Mooglike" touch.
The case was a Technics Organ. The "bentcontroller" (left in the c64 keyboard) comes out of an 70´s Farfisa Organ (Nicole de Luxe). The black knobs were taken from an old amplifier. The "HALT" button (reset > if may sweety hangs up) comes out of a late 70´s "Willi Wacker Spielautomat" together with the mainswitch-lock
It is basically a Casio PT-82 (i choose it because i´m born in 1982 ).

All buttons and knobs have different functions, and you can mix everything with everything.
It feels like an ill analog synth, but makes lots of fun to play on/with.

Here is my "Thing" i just finished today.This is my first bent ever, but i must say that electronics are not new for me.
I decided to give it a retro "Mooglike" touch.
The case was a Technics Organ. The "bentcontroller" (left in the c64 keyboard) comes out of an 70´s Farfisa Organ (Nicole de Luxe). The black knobs were taken from an old amplifier. The "HALT" button (reset > if may sweety hangs up) comes out of a late 70´s "Willi Wacker Spielautomat" together with the mainswitch-lock
It is basically a Casio PT-82 (i choose it because i´m born in 1982 ).

All buttons and knobs have different functions, and you can mix everything with everything.
It feels like an ill analog synth, but makes lots of fun to play on/with.

Hmmyeah.. not a lot of activity here, you're right about that. Then again it isn't very helpfull to withdraw and start your own forum. That would be diluting the resources even further. I wish you all the best with it though.

I don't mean by any means this forum is dead. There are many people devoted to posting their projects and others they find around the web. I plan to continue contributing to this forum as well as the forum I made.

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